The Red Flag We Mistake For Vulnerability | Mid Week Tease

This week on The Mid Week Tease, Adelle explores one of the most confusing relationship dynamics: loving someone who is deeply attached to being the victim. Not everyone who has experienced pain is stuck in victimhood. Many people carry trauma, grief and heartbreak while still taking accountability for their actions. But what happens when someone's wounds become their identity? When every ex was toxic, every friendship ended in betrayal, every boss was unfair, and every conflict somehow ends with them being the injured party? In this episode, Adelle unpacks:

• The difference between pain and victimhood
• Why empathy can sometimes become self-abandonment
• The hidden entitlement that often sits beneath chronic victimhood
• How accountability gets reversed in unhealthy relationships
• Why so many women become trapped in the role of healer, rescuer or saviour
• The difference between someone who is healing and someone who is attached to staying hurt
• Why you cannot do someone else's healing for them
• The question every woman should ask herself before staying in these dynamics

If you've ever found yourself exhausted from carrying the emotional weight of a relationship, this episode is for you.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Midwick Teeth with me adele Jangle, where
I share some random and not to random thoughts on
things and in this episode, especially following last week's episode
where we talked about who you are beyond your wounds
and beyond your pain, in this episode, I want us

(00:23):
to dive into when the reverse happens in a romantic relationship,
when you are dating someone who is addicted to their pain,
that is their identity. They are neck deep in victimhood.
They don't even understand it, and how that can affect

(00:44):
you negatively, and how that sometimes overlaps with abuse. But
first and foremost, just a disclaimer, it's really cold, so
I'm working and recording by the fire. My incredible team
is going to try and calm the sound of the

(01:06):
cackling fire. But in case you hear, it's just know
a girl is cold. But I still have to deliver
this message in this episode to you. So, as I said,
I want to talk about dating somebody who is deeply
rooted in victimhood. They're always a victim. They always have

(01:26):
a reason why things are happening to them only and
nasty things at that. They always have an explanation to this.
They are always ready to tell you every way they
have been hurt, abandoned, betrayed, misunderstood, overlooked, mistreated by the

(01:47):
people around them, from when they were a toddler to
now as an adult. But somehow they never have any curiosity,
even forget awareness, any curiosity about the role they might
be playing in their own life. And I want to

(02:08):
be very clear, this is not an episode about judging
people who have experienced trauma. As I said last week
and I'm saying it again, trauma is real, pain is real,
abuses real, and many of us have survived things that
have fundamentally changed us. So this episode is not about that.

(02:30):
It's about what happens when pain stops being this thing
that we're healing from and it becomes who we are.
It becomes our identity and what it feels like to
be in a relationship with someone whose entire sense of
self is just organized around being wronged. I know I've

(02:52):
talked about this guy before, and I think he's one
of my favorite thinkers. Doctor Gabor Mate to be honest,
like ah, he just explains concepts so well. But one
of the things I love about his work is how
deeply compassionate. He is towards human suffering, So most of
the time he wouldn't ask what's wrong with you? What

(03:15):
he asks is what happened to you? And I've always
found that to be such a beautiful question. But I
also think there's another question that matters, hey, which is
what are you doing with what happened to you? Has
it become your personality and your identity? And is it

(03:35):
something that you are using to fuel lifelong exemption from accountability,
Because yes, what happened to you may explain your behavior,
but it does not excuse your behavior. And I think

(03:56):
sometimes we confuse the two, especially in romand relationships. Right,
you hear someone's story, you understand their wounds, you empathize.
Am I've had to pull my empathy into order, but yeah,
you empathize with their suffering, and then you find that
you've stopped holding them accountable. Have you ever met someone

(04:21):
who somehow always seems to have the worst luck in
the world. You know, when they are telling you about
their exes. All their exes were toxic, all their friends
betrayed them, Every boss was jealous and difficult, every family
member was unfair, every business partner was manipulative. Every disagreement

(04:47):
is like an attack to them, and every conflict was
somebody else's fault. And if you're in a relationship that
somebody else would potentially be you. I have been in
such a relationship, Oh my goodness. And at first you
feel sorry for them, right of course you do. You

(05:07):
have a hat. You're not a robot. You care and
you want to understand. And on top of that, this
is someone you care about, and you may have deep
emotional feelings for so you care. But over time you
may start noticing something that The stories change, the people change,

(05:29):
the context of the environment of the story change, but
the pattern, the pattern never changes, and the one constant
in every story is them. Now, please hear me. Clearly,
People can absolutely experience repeated abuse, repeated trauma, repeated discrimination,

(05:51):
repeated hardship. That does happen. But what I'm talking about
is the complete inability to examine one his own behavior.
I think I probably used to be this person right where,
And I think I've explained it in the episode where
we had Farid key Money on our show Legally Clueless,

(06:12):
and he talked deeply and beautifully about his battle with
alcoholism and how victimhood just didn't help help him. He
had to snap out of it. And I remember saying
that used to be me, not with alcoholism. But like,
I would never interrogate my role in repeated patterns. Not

(06:37):
my role in trauma, okay, not my role in what
what was done to me. But if there's a repeated pattern,
I have to ask myself. Okay, Adelle, why do you
always get attracted to emotionally unavailable men. It doesn't it

(07:00):
excuse that in those relationships I experienced a roughness and
a lack of care, Not at all. That's not what
I would be interrogating, because that was in my fault.
But I would be interrogating the pattern where those are
the relationships I gravitate to. And so there is this

(07:21):
quote that I carry with me all the time, and
it's by a psychologist called cal Jang. Oh my god,
if you take nothing else from this episode, take this quote.
He says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will
direct your life, and you will call it fate. Can

(07:47):
I please just repeat it because I really love this quote.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life,
and you will call it fate. In other words, if
we never examine ourselves. We begin to believe life is
simply happening to us. Everything becomes fate, everything becomes bad luck,

(08:13):
everything becomes somebody else's fault, and then we never realize
that we are participating in the very patterns that we
claim to hate. Am I shouting is it landing? Is
it landing? Let's unpack empathy because we're talking about dating
someone who is just like neck deep in victimhood and

(08:36):
in those situations, in my experience, I found out my
empathy was a trap. And I think many women we
get pulled into these relationships because we are socialized to
be caretakers. It's not biology, it's socialization. Socialized to be understanding,
to be patient, to be naturing, to see the wounded

(08:57):
child behind the behavior, and like, well, that's not necessarily
all bad, it's not an all bad thing. I think
the problem begins when like compassion turns into self abandonment,
right when the understanding becomes an excuse and empathy becomes

(09:23):
what like a permission, a permission slip for abuse, and
you find yourself saying things like, oh, you know he's
done ABCD, that's really bad. But he had a very
difficult childhood, or he's been through a lot and amusing
he because I'm attracted to men, so I'm in relationships

(09:44):
with men. But you know, you could interchange this with
whatever your preference is. He does things and you think,
you know he's been through a lot, he's struggling, he
doesn't really mean it. You're excusing and before you know it,
you become less of a partner and now you're more

(10:04):
of a rehabilitation center. You are carrying the emotional weight
of the entire relationship. You're the one doing the work.
Let me tell you that was me. You're the one
doing the work. You're the one doing the reflection, you're
the one doing the communication. You are the one doing
repair work. You're the one doing emotional labor. And for them,

(10:28):
they're doing what they've always done, which is telling you
why none of it is their responsibility. There's also another
dynamic outside of empathy, which is when you become the
one who finally understands them. And this is I have
to say, it's so it has such an allure. It's

(10:49):
such a seductive thing. You know when the person that
you love as much as they're like so deep in
victim mood. They don't even see their own rule. And
they've told you all of these things they've been through
and have happened to them, and then they say, no
one understands me, everyone leaves, nobody has ever loved me properly.

(11:12):
But you're different. You're the only one who gets me.
And it feels eh. It feels sweet because you feel special.
You feel chosen and trusted and important. You feel like

(11:33):
maybe you're the one who's gonna be the person who
finally gives them the love that they deserve that will
change everything. But then, over time, as things never change,
you start to realize something super painful, which is you
are not the first person who has been assigned that rule.

(11:53):
Nothing is going to change, which means you're not going
to be the last person to get that rule. Because
the issue has never been a lack of understanding. It
was always and will continue to be a lack of accountability.
I think one of the clearest signs of victimhood based
you know, relationships is when you can never discuss their

(12:18):
behavior without becoming responsible for their emotions. Let me break
that down because I think very many of us have
been in this situation. I have, so you raise a
concern and then what follows is that they're hurts or
you express like I'm disappointed about ABCD, and then they

(12:42):
respond with devastation or hey, and listen to this one,
because this one I've been in, and I know quite
a few women have been in. You set a boundary
and suddenly you are this mean, cruel person, or you
explain how something impacted you negatively, but then they become

(13:04):
the victim. Are you seeing a pattern here, Like the
conversation starts with your pain, but then at the end
of it, you're the one comforting them. Let me tell
you many psychologists have written about this dynamic because many,
many people have gone through it. And there's one that
I want to focus on. She's a family therapist. Her
name is Harriet Lerner. She talks about how people avoid

(13:28):
accountability by shifting the focus away from the issue and
towards the emotional discomfort of being challenged. So then the
original issue disappears, their accountability disappears, and now we're all
busy managing your partner's feelings instead. Please, before I continue,

(13:52):
if you have experienced this, just put whatever emoji, whether
it's one hundred percent or the fist Bump. Put it
in the comment section wherever you're listening to this on
because I think very many of us have been through it,
and there is something that took me years to understand.

(14:15):
Victimhood and entitlement are boys their cousins. They travel together
because when someone has suffered, they begin to believe they
deserve special exemptions. They deserve more patience, more forgiveness, more understanding,
more chances, more grace. And while grace and things like

(14:38):
that are it is so beautiful, relationships cannot survive on
grace alone. At some point there must be responsibility, there
must be repair, and there must be change. Without all
of these things, then one person who is you, who

(15:01):
is carrying the relationship while the other person is carrying
a story about why they can't. Oh my god, I
none wanted to talk about this topic, but I'm even
getting triggered about past relationships. Hey, but I think the
most important question is not is this person wounded because

(15:24):
most of us are right. It's not has this person
suffered because most of us have. I think the question
is what are they doing with that suffering? Because there's
a huge difference between someone who's actively addressing the impact
of their suffering and someone who is attached to being hurt.

(15:47):
We talked about this last week, right Because then a
healing person says, ABCD happened to me. But I want
to understand myself and I want a healthier relationship. So
I want to in the bud how it's affecting the relationship.
I want to grow, I want to do better. But
a person who is attached to victimhood says, this happened

(16:11):
to me, and then the study ends their full stop.
The wind becomes the identity, their personality and their explanation
for everything. So as I'm telling you that I've been
in these relationships and you probably have, there's a big

(16:31):
question of why do we stay? Because sometimes we'll focus
on like, wh where is this person like this? You know?
Whereas I think what's in our control? And then becomes
a more powerful question is why did I stay? Why
did I believe it was my responsibility to heal somebody
who wasn't healing themselves. Why did I keep extending grace

(16:55):
where there was no growth? Why did I confuse being
needed with being loved? And I think for very many
of us women, we learned very early that our value
came from what we could do for others, you know,
how much could we carry, how much could we fix?

(17:15):
In fact, for me in therapy, I mean I'm delivered.
I'm no longer that woman. But my therapist and I
noticed that I would arrive in relationships with the toolbox.
I didn't think I was enough. So I was gonna
help fix you and heal you to prove my worth
so that you let me stay. You know, and I
think this is this is the story for very many women.

(17:38):
So when we meet someone who's drowning in their own wounds,
we don't see danger. We see Aha, my chance to
shine and prove my worth. So that's why you picked somebody.
You haven't inklaned this person? Could you know these problems here?
Sorry for my non so heally speakers. I almost went

(17:58):
down so HELI route. But like you see, there's a
problem here, but you're attracted that you're seeing papas and
a chance to prove your worth. Now, one of the
hardest truths I've had to learn is that nobody can
heal for someone else. You can support them, you can
encourage them, you can love them, you can hold space

(18:20):
for them, but you cannot do the healing. So as
we wrap, I want to leave you with this question.
When you look at the people in your life, the
person you're dating right now or your excess, the people
that you dated, do you see someone committed to healing

(18:41):
or do you see someone committed to remain in hurt.
Those two things are not the same. One leads to freedom,
another one leads to repetition. And if you're someone who
has spent so much time loving people through their pain,
what I want to leave you with is you are

(19:03):
not responsible for carrying someone else's healing. You are not
responsible for saving people from themselves. And oh my god,
this is so poetic because I'm recording this. As I
said in front of my fire, you do not have
to set yourself on fire to prove that you love

(19:25):
someone else to give them warmth. Do you know sometimes
the most potent act of love is to step back.
It's to step back, and it's to allow people to
become responsible for their own lives. Oh, I hope this

(19:47):
episode has landed. I hope it's landed, because so many
of us find ourselves in these type of relationships and
they just consume us and rob us of our lights.
You know what I mean? And I really want you
to be liberated from that. I hope you connected with

(20:09):
this episode and if you did, share it with someone
that you love. Thanks for listening to The midwik T's
a Legally Clueless Africa production. Episodes go out every Wednesday,
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